Coronation Street bosses have explained the decision to make the late Vera Duckworth appear to her dying widower Jack, saying it reflected real accounts of people's final moments.

Eleven million viewers tuned in on Monday to watch Corrie stalwart Jack, played by Bill Tarmey, share a last dance with Vera (Liz Dawn) before dying in his chair after three decades on the cobbles.

Discussing the inclusion of Vera in the scene, producer Phil Collinson said: "It's something I've heard a lot. People say, 'When my mother was dying she saw my father', or 'When my grandmother was dying she said she saw her mother'.

"It's a story I've heard a few people say. We're storytellers at the end of the day. Yes it's Coronation Street and yes it reflects real life, but we're storytellers.

"I suppose a little romantic in me would like to imagine that somebody comes at the end for us all who we love. And it somehow made Jack's exit so much more epic and about more than just a man who lived in a back street, and yet that's all it was about."

The producer made his comments at a screening and discussion panel at the BFI Southbank in London to mark the soap's 50th anniversary.

The show's creator Tony Warren echoed the remarks and said his own father claimed to have seen his departed parents shortly before he died in hospital.

"I went home and said to my mother, 'I think we should make up our mind he's not going to come out'. And he didn't. He died that night," he said.

Corrie's executive producer Kieran Roberts said he would be surprised if anyone thought it was the wrong decision to reunite Jack and Vera on-screen.

He added: "I think it was absolutely right that at the end of Jack's life it was Jack and Vera. They're one of the great television couples. I think it was the right thing to see them together in his final moments."